Saudi’s MERS Concerns Grow as Hajj Season Approaches

About 20,000 health professionals will be on hand at this year’s hajj.

Saudi Arabia continues to report sporadic new cases and deaths from a lethal new coronavirus, as hajj season in October — when the kingdom expects more than 3 million pilgrims from 187 countries –- approaches.

While the World Health Organization and most – but not all – international disease experts interviewed generally have commended the measures Saudi Arabia has put in place since the virus surfaced last year, interviews with visitors to the kingdom underscore what seems to be a gap in WHO-recommended health measures – public notices in Saudi Arabia of the disease, and of basic precautions against it.

“To be honest, we have no idea how to protect ourselves, how to prevent it,” one of two Japanese businessmen said last week at Riyadh’s airport. Like Muslim pilgrims and other visitors interviewed over the course of the summer, the two business people – who declined to give their names – said they came and left the kingdom without seeing or hearing any public health advisory on MERS.

As of Friday, the Saudi Ministry of Health said it had confirmed 84 cases, with 42 deaths, countrywide from what international health officials have dubbed the MERS Cov virus, for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus.

Epidemiologists say the MERS virus is related to the SARS virus, which sickened thousands and killed nearly 800 people in a far more fast-paced outbreak a decade ago. Globally, the World Health Organization says, it has confirmed 108 cases of the Middle East-based virus since September 2012.

“I think the take-home message is: MERS is not SARS,” Saudi Arabia’s deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told U.S. public-health professionals in a briefing there Friday. Unlike SARS, Dr. Memish said, the Middle East virus so far has not adapted to spread rapidly among humans. It typically hits hardest at older people and those already ill, Saudi and international health officials say.

In October, Saudi Arabia hosts what is the world’s largest annual gathering of people, when Muslims from around the world come to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to worship.

The Saudi Health Ministry did not immediately respond to emails, phone calls and text messages this week and last seeking a briefing on the kingdom’s MERS preparations for the hajj or answers to questions on the outbreak.

International health officials meeting under the auspices of the WHO in July ruled that MERS so far did not represent a public-health emergency.

Saudi Arabia is continuing extensive testing for the virus, Dr. Memish said in Friday’s speech. The kingdom annually mounts massive programs to care for the hajj influx, including what this year will be 20,000 health professionals on hand to deal with any health emergencies among pilgrims, he said.

Saudi news media – whose coverage is closely influenced by the government – early in the course of the new disease played down the MERS virus, reporting even after medical authorities had said otherwise that it did not spread from person to person, for example.

The Saudi Ministry of Health this summer dedicated a section of its website to briefing on the virus and current cases and deaths. Saudi newspapers began more prominently running stories on fatalities and cases, using the health department releases.

In interviews during the outbreak, Western experts in infectious diseases have said that media reports of Saudi Arabia deliberately withholding information from the international community on MERS are overblown.

The kingdom still should be doing more to get more details out to medical professionals, more quickly, said Dr. Ian M. Mackay, an infectious disease expert at the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Center at Australia’s University of Queensland.

“While we have seen very detailed reports in scientific journals, these are not up-to-the-minute, and not suitable as the only flow of public health information,” Dr. Mackay, who tracks MERS reporting in his medical blog, said in an e-mail Monday. “A more rapid information flow is required.”

In July, WHO issued guidelines recommending health advisories be made available to the public at sites such as airports and other points of entry, onboard planes and ships, in the forms of banners, pamphlets or radio announcements.

In August, travelers through the airports at Jeddah – the gateway for pilgrims – and Riyadh said they had noticed no such advisories.

“I wish there were,” a Western businessman said last week at the Riyadh airport as he headed to the customs line to return home to Dubai. “I know to wash my hands, but how about all the other people?”.

Comments (3 of 3)

Muslim start their day by washing hand, face, head and feet. The businessman only washes his hand.Talk about hygiene.

1:47 am September 4, 2013

woff wrote:

I’m not buying the explanation that bats or camels carry the dieses. Look at the demographics. If bats and or camels were the root cause then the outbreak would fallow there movement patterns not the borders of a nation or the limits of movement around a city.

4:22 pm September 3, 2013

gloribea wrote:

This is a pandemic waiting to happen. I am shocked the WHO has not put a halt on Hajj or at least made it know that those who go to Saudi Arabia that they will not re-enter the US or other countries without isolation and testing. Only those with negative tests will be allowed to travel out of Saudi Arabia and any surrounding countries. Sounds extreme? What sounds extreme to me is a pandemic primarily in Islamic areas of countries. Then we will see radical Islamaphobe like you have never imagined. Think about it.